In the field of telecommunications, there is a rapidly increasing requirement for a larger and larger number of communication channels. Current techniques allow a plurality of optical fibers to be provided to one circuit board. Each optical fiber can carry a plurality of communication channels. As more and more communication channels are created, there is also a requirement for these communication channels to be processed, analyzed, and routed. This processing, analysis and routing must generally be performed by a digital processor. Efficiencies can be achieved if a single processor processes a plurality of communication channels rather than having a dedicated processor for each channel.
Several attempts have been made to allow a single processor to handle a plurality of communications channels. For example, communication channel controller chips may be provided between the incoming communications channels and the single processor in order to regulate the flow of data, however this solution requires a large amount of circuit board space for the communication channel controllers. It also generally requires a system for bus arbitration and sharing of memory. This can result in a larger drain on the main processor.
Another attempted solution is to provide a slave processor to the main processor to handle some of the additional processing. This solution is difficult to implement and requires very difficult software programming.
Other solutions that have been proposed include either omitting or switching between communication channels. These solutions have the problem that Operations, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning (OAM&P) information may then be missing for the communication channels that are omitted or that are active when the processor is working on a different channel.
One additional solution that has been attempted is to use time division multiplexing of the communication channels to provide separate channels in particular time slots sent to the processor. This solution has problems in that the communication channels may not be synchronous and is also limited in the number of channels that can be time division multiplexed together for processing by the processor. In particular, each processor is limited to some extent by its clocking frequency.